


Jason and the Mixed Messages

by nonky



Category: Nancy Drew (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:53:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22369792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonky/pseuds/nonky
Summary: "Life isn't fair," Nancy said blandly. "I screwed up. My father might pay with the rest of his life in prison."Her ex looked at her as if she'd answered with gibberish. He pointed at the other man furiously, using the umbrella almost threateningly. "And I thought Owen might sail into shore with some crazy story of losing you overboard."She relented enough to put a hand out and push the umbrella down. If they got into a fight over her on the dock, she was going to walk off into the rain and live in a cave on the beach somewhere. Let them both worry about her without any way to make it her fault she wasn't being appropriately grateful.Spoilers up to Episode 9. Follows directly from Tantalus and the Red Sky.
Relationships: Nancy Drew/Ned Nickerson, Nancy Drew/Owen Marvin
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7
Collections: Nancy Drew TV Series (2019)





	Jason and the Mixed Messages

The tides and wind carried Tiny Vessel home with admirable efficiency, as if the boat knew they were preoccupied with whatever harsh realities waited on dry land. Nancy had put on her shorts and borrowed a sweater from Owen. He was still bare chested, but the day was cooler than before. 

Or maybe we just felt the unfriendly stare even miles out, Nancy mused. She spotted Nick standing on the dock beside the Marvin's berth. As they'd approached land a rain shower had started. Their phone signals returned with a flurry of notifications she quickly realized were dozens of attempts to check in with her during the day. It was nice to know people cared, but she wasn't okay. 

She didn't have the energy to pretend at optimism. It was her own fault she was without her father, and she couldn't explain herself well enough to express the sure feeling of her suspicion having a valid basis until the moment it dissipated in a horrified realization. The certainty was huge, crushing oxygen out of her lungs until it was spoken aloud by someone else and she couldn't recognize it as anything truthful about her father.

They were getting good at finding her where she didn't want to be found, Nancy thought with a degree of admiration for her new friends. At least it was just one of them and not all four of them abandoning the restaurant.

"Well, that didn't take long," Owen said, calmly continuing to guide the boat in. He pulled on a shirt as soon as he could, and looked at her with a little smile of encouragement. "So how are we playing this? Casual? Or should I flex a bit and sweep you away with me?"

Her messages from Nick were all some version of asking where she was and if she was safe. He didn't look happy, but she suspected it was more of the same fear he'd shown for her when she broke into Ryan Hudson's house. There didn't seem to be new information. Her father was in custody. It was just the news was getting around town.

"I'll talk to him," she said. "Everyone seems to think I was off getting murdered or something. George doesn't even seem angry after the first few texts."

"Let's not joke about getting murdered," he said quietly. "I just met you, but I know I'd miss you."

"Sorry. They're just being a little dramatic about it. I'll talk to Nick. Maybe something happened at the restaurant, but I think this is them trying to rescue me."

Owen scrolled his own pile of texts and missed calls, nothing showing from his reaction of any surprises. He made it a point to stand closer than necessary, and ran his hand down her back gently in a way Nick wouldn't see. "Bess tried to get me asking about us. They don't trust me with you," he told her. "That's okay. I'm glad they would come looking. You have some dangerous hobbies."

She shook her head. "They just - I keep setting this terrible example of asking why anyone near me does anything, as if there's no such thing as coincidence. I have them looking for murderers and saboteurs in everyone new. Don't take it personally. Hang back a few minutes and I'll figure this out."

Her news alerts gave a half dozen links, the headlines taking her side bizarrely against Carson Drew, as if they'd been in a long celebrity feud. The ship needed a few minutes of preparation to be properly anchored and closed up securely. Nancy carried the picnic basket over to the spot where Nick hovered with an umbrella open. He reached out and took it, setting it down to hold Nancy's hand until she had stepped over the gap and was registering the end of the sensation of waves. 

"Hi," she said quietly. "Is everything okay?"

"That should be my line," Nick told her. "You went missing. I mean, you were nowhere and your house was empty. Car was gone, phone wouldn't let us leave any more messages, and texting didn't get to you. I nearly broke into your house, but nothing made sense about it. Then I heard about your father."

He'd inadvertently implied something about arresting her father for murder did make sense, and Nancy knew she stiffened. It wasn't fair to turn her anger out to Nick for a clumsy phrase. He knew she might not stay at home when she was upset from hosting her at his own garage living space. 

"I needed some air. I'm going to bring this to the car." Nancy picked up the food and started walking. 

She should have invested a few minutes in texting before she was on the boat. It looked selfish and frivolous to be sailing with her father's character getting eviscerated in media. It made her look like she'd done this all on purpose and was celebrating. It hadn't even delayed the news frenzy. They had decided she was heroic, and praised her. 

"I think Owen is guilty of some of the things we've been trying to link to the Hudsons." Nick followed her, holding his umbrella to try to cover both of them. 

Nancy just moved quicker, dodging him as he tried to keep her out of the rain. He'd given up boyfriend duties, and now he had to be content with friendship. She'd been pushed to acknowledge him in importance and now he was imposing again on her life. 

Murder charges moved through courts fast, negating a lot of her effort she'd directed at Tiffany's death. Cases went cold in record time. She didn't think Owen was a killer. She knew her father wasn't a killer. Nick had spent his time in prison for the freak accident that had made him one. It was his bad luck his moment of being pushed to defend himself had gone so far.

Her gut feeling was sufficient a thousand times before, and she hated to think how many times she listened to that feeling like it had the gravity of knowledge. Nancy had to think through what she only assumed, as if she had magical secret infallibility over facts. 

Going forward she was going to follow her evidence and demand results based on real physical connections. That meant she was looking for a female killer for Lucy Sable, and that was the only case she was prioritizing. If she could give a name of an alternate suspect, Carson Drew would go free. But opposition by way of her new group of amateur sleuths wasn't getting in her way.

"I have no idea. He was a child during Lucy's murder, so right now I don't care. My father is in jail. I was the one too stubborn and suspicious to keep it private. My father said I'd end up alone. It's happening. So I need to be forgetting my old ways. Owen likes me. Is that insane to you?"

His voice bobbed with the effort to keep the umbrella steady, as the rain intensified. Nancy had to stop at a gate, unlatching it and pushing it wide to let Nick through with a careful angle. 

"His family money is all over Horseshoe Bay. It's ideal for hiring people to do all sorts of dirty work," he said. "They donate a fortune here. Who does that without having some of it buy what you want?"

The tax break might be enough to be worthwhile, or just the old-fashioned noblesse oblige of a wealthy family that witnessed the ease of permits in a town well-funded by their thriving business. Nancy knew Horseshoe Bay wasn't prime real estate, but it had a good tourism trade. It was near the city, and summers were lovely.

"His family is the Marvins. I used to go with my parents on their Labour Day cruise each year. They give a lot to the town, and so do a bunch of other families. Sometimes I think they must compete to fund activities."

It was a nicer town than it should be, particularly for a place with only seasonal tourism going for it. Nancy knew a lot of the better stores and restaurants only survived by going all out for certain VIP guests.

"That's a cop out." Nick sounded bitter. It might have been because they were next to Owen's car, her blue roadster nowhere to be seen.

"No! For once it's a valid method of investigation. Sometimes you narrow in on a family to prove their guilt. Sometimes you're ruling them out. Both require a lot of information to cross-index. Tiffany is just as likely to have checked and cleared the Marvins. I am free to keep following real leads to exonerate my father."

Nancy had Owen's keys, and let herself into his car with an ease that obviously bothered Nick excessively. He watched her lay the basket in the trunk and stood close to lower his voice. 

"And put yourself in harm's way with Owen."

"And assume he just wants to date me," she told him. "Like I did with you, I might argue."

Nick's wounded look rubbed her the wrong way. Nancy didn't have the extra energy to sort out if she was in the wrong. "It's not the same," he muttered.

She hadn't meant to compare the two men. They were both attractive, but Nick needed more from her than she had. Owen was prepared to step away when she was busy and coping with other problems.

"No, because if I were doing my usual wild speculation, I might say the connection to Lucy through her messages could be read as Lucy having been murdered by Tiffany in some kind of jealousy over Ryan, explaining the female DNA. I might be wasting time stealing hair from Laura Tandy to prove Tiffany killed Lucy and then was murdered herself to make it impossible for her to finish her quest to wash her hands of the other Hudsons and admit the murder."

Nancy pushed the trunk mostly shut. It was shitty to pick on Tiffany Hudson. Nick's friend was one of the few people in his life he'd kept through his incarceration. She knew she shouldn't be showing off her cruel trick of being able to make anyone seem as guilty as they could look innocent.

"Guilt could explain all her feelings of being haunted. It could explain the failure of her marriage. It could have been the rest of her need to prove all her rich in-laws were complicit. And since the Marvins had stopped working with the current set of Hudsons, it actually suggests Owen is cleaner than most of them because he's only been working in the family business the past six years. He was part of getting them away from co-ventures because he blames them for sinking the Bonny Scot and killing his uncle."

She crossed her arms and let the nasty words do what she'd intended. Nick was closing the umbrella, letting them both get soaked as he gestured out in frustration.

"You're twisting my words. I'm showing you why you need to question Owen's motives."

Nancy shook her head, making her voice hushed. She could see Owen approaching them down the dock, his steps speeding up as their argument escalated. "Or jealousy, which I knew you were feeling before we broke up."

"That's not fair."

"Life isn't fair," Nancy said blandly. "I screwed up. My father might pay with the rest of his life in prison."

Her ex looked at her as if she'd answered with gibberish. He pointed at the other man furiously, using the umbrella almost threateningly. "And I thought Owen might sail into shore with some crazy story of losing you overboard."

She relented enough to put a hand out and push the umbrella down. If they got into a fight over her on the dock, she was going to walk off into the rain and live in a cave on the beach somewhere. Let them both worry about her without any way to make it her fault she wasn't being appropriately grateful. 

"But I don't have evidence on him, you do! He's not trying to get you on a boat. He asked me, and kissed me, and - date type things happened," she said, wincing at her overshare. "No talk about Tiffany other than my apology that we destroyed coins he could have used to help the FBI nail the Hudsons. At the seance, Lucy said Yes-No-Yes to the question about a Hudson killing her. The answer could mean yes, Tiffany killed her for the chance to marry in, making a yes but first a no, because she was younger at the time and still a Tandy. Owen was six when Lucy Sable died. You can suspect him of whatever you want now, but back then he was probably just watching cartoons and going to Kindergarten."

Nick rolled his eyes, flicking his palm over his face as rain got into them. "We're going by a glitch in a child's toy," he said, his tone actively angry. 

"A pre-arranged signal from a spirit using a child's toy to communicate with us the way we asked. You seemed pretty convinced that night."

He'd been as terrified as the rest of them, and she couldn't let him ignore leads that took him uncomfortably close to questioning Tiffany as a person. 

"Why can't you let my theory be valid? It's more of a long shot to believe yours will go anywhere for justice."

"Because I feel like Owen has come through on favours without any gain. No one hears anything I say to him either second hand or because he thinks I need backup. If I have to trust someone, the numbers on Owen are better than your batting average as a confidant," Nancy said firmly. 

Nick looked hurt, stepping away with slumped shoulders. "You're ignoring me, writing off anything I find out."

"I'm realizing your cache of clues is from a source of unclear loyalties, and you are set on TIffany having pure motives. She could make people look good or bad by omitting or including documents. She could have been up to some wholely separate investigation that only muddles mine into Lucy's death. I'm recognizing there are ways to sculpt a truth you want to see."

Nick was soaked through, cold and miserable. He still argued with her instead of agreeing to disagree. They didn't have to keep breaking up in different ways, over and over. "You're angry at me. I hurt you. But I really am worried."

She shrugged emphatically. "I didn't like getting rejected. But mistrust can spiral into never having anything good in your life and I don't want that. Owen and I were thrown together and I like him. I'll be cautious, but if he asks again I'll go out with him."

He visibly inhaled and exhaled deeply, using some kind of measured breathing technique to marshall patience. 

"I don't have any right to complain about who you date. I know this looks like jealousy and part of it is. The other part is that I always felt you were trying to shove past something into the rest of your life. Sometimes you have to feel all the helpless and sadness and ugly stuff until you don't feel it anymore," Nick said. He tilted his head and it was heartbreaking the way he looked at her sideways and hurried to speak while they were still alone. 

"I would never rush you to have sex with me, but I think you rushed yourself. I think you'd do it again with Owen. This all or nothing obsession with solving everything is trying to fix the way you feel when you slow down for a second."

Her cheeks were a wash of red, but she felt queasy underneath the embarrassment. Nancy pretended to look for something in her purse. 

"Maybe you've got me all figured out," she said coolly. "But you just described a personal problem, and you and I are not that anymore. Can you just drop it, please?"

Missing his window for a favour this time, Owen showed up too late to help her avoid anything. She was glad the rain concealed the tears that had started at some point and were flowing freely. 

"Hey Nick," he said, keeping his tone even as he took the keys from her hand and curled their fingers together. Owen flipped the trunk open, threw a few more things inside before he latched it, and gestured to the sky. "Is your umbrella broken?"

He was admirably calm, but his confident move to stand between them effectively ended Nick's blunt words. The shorts and t-shirt had to be chilly, but Owen looked stronger in his wet clothes than Nick in his Dodd's work jacket. 

"Something like that," Nick mumbled. 

"Never fails." Owen led her to the passenger side, handing her into the car like she was his elderly relative. "Can we drop you off to your truck?"

It was all friendly and uneventful, Owen keeping a bland expression as he separated them and gently squeezed her hand before asking her, "We're not in a hurry, right? It's no trouble."

"No trouble," she repeated. 

He was good, effortlessly getting all three of them out of the situation with dignity mostly salvaged. Nancy watched as Nick left quickly. She noticed Owen waited on the side of the car for a few seconds, glancing in at her carefully before he shut her door.

He got in and put on his seatbelt, fiddling with the vents while Nancy struggled with blurry vision until she could strap in. Owen put the key in but didn't turn it. 

"Do you want me to listen or just drive," he asked. 

"They got worried," she told him. "I should have talked to one of them directly before I got on the boat. It's okay."

She turned the key for Owen, and he nodded seriously before setting the wipers to aggressively clear the rain and drive them away.


End file.
